As the final bell rings, a flurry of six- and seven-year-olds dash out of class at Minami Ikebukuro Primary School in Tokyo: hats on, water bottles flying. Four girls are left behind; it’s their turn to clean up. They pull child-sized brooms from a cupboard and get to work. Four brushes knock together as they gather paper shreds and dirt. “It always gets dusty here,” says Mariya, pointing to grooves in the floor. The others rush over to help. By cleaning, children learn not to make a mess in the first place, says Kohashiguchi Megumi, the teacher. They also learn to be egalitarian: no, “Oh the caretaker will clean it up later.”
At first, small children “act wild, like monsters!” says Satou Hiroshi, the genial head teacher. “Our job is to prepare them to enter society” by teaching them to collaborate, take initiative and treat everyone equally. He calls it hito-zukuri, the art of making people.
The results are impressive. Not only do Japanese children do well academically; they also show remarkable independence at a young age. Six-year-olds walk or ride the metro unaccompanied to school. (It helps that the country is unusually safe.) Sugiura Kouma, seven, walks the ten-minute route daily. “I get nervous because he has to cross a main road, but people help him,” says Hiroki, his father. A Japanese reality show features toddlers going to the shops on their own to buy fishcakes. Contrast this with the hysterical safetyism sometimes seen in the West, where many parents are convinced something terrible will happen if they stop hovering over their children for an instant, and where governments sometimes act as if this were true. In October Brittany Patterson, a mother in the American state of Georgia, was handcuffed and arrested because her ten-year-old was seen walking calmly to the town less than a mile from his home.
Your correspondent takes a particular interest in Japanese education: her children attended pre-school in Tokyo, when she was The Economist’s bureau chief there, and are now at a Japanese school in Mexico. Over the years, she has seen both the strengths of the system, such as imbuing children with self-discipline and consideration for others, and its flaws, such as excessive conformity. This article stems, in part, from the debate within her family about how long to stick with Japanese-style schooling. To assess the system fairly, she went back to Japan to investigate.
Japan’s approach dates back centuries. During the feudal Edo period (1603-1868), the samurai class set up schools to train literate, ethical warriors. Schools in temples trained the peasants; this may be where the practice of kids cleaning classrooms began. In the 19th century, after the shock of contact with the industrialised West, education was centralised and geared to modernisation. As Japan turned to militarism in the 20th century, schools promoted imperial fervour. After defeat in the second world war and American occupation, the curriculum became more democratic.
Schools in Japan today still strive to build character. They stress discipline and responsibility to others, says Nakano Koichi, a political scientist. Group harmony trumps individualism. Authority is important. Rules are internalised, so that scolding is unnecessary.
But the overall approach is much more humane than that bare summary makes it sound. The education ministry’s slogan is chi-toku-tai: a blend of chi (academic ability), toku (moral integrity), and tai (physical health). This means lots of sports and arts. It also means that teachers praise effort, rather than achievement. Studies suggest this is an excellent idea: it makes children more resilient, notes Jennifer Lansford of Duke University.
The social context in which Japanese schools operate is in many ways like the West: Japan, too, is a rich, liberal democracy. But in some ways it is different. Whereas Americans want their children to be leaders and win competitions, Japanese parents place greater value on their offspring getting along with others, surveys find. Relationships with mothers are especially close in Japan. Most kids share their mother’s bed until they are ten. Research reveals Japanese mothers typically anticipate their children’s needs, whereas American mothers wait for requests.
So schools must teach kids to cope with less coddling. This starts at preschool, where they focus on free play, music, arts and crafts, exercise and nature appreciation. They are taught to dress themselves and wash their hands. (There are regular health and dental checks here and in schools, too; a blessing for busy parents.) Much thought goes into the simplest activities. Children learn both jumping and turning a skipping-rope for their classmates, blending exercise, motor skills and group co-ordination. Origami involves an increasing number of folds at each age. Pencil cases with a slot for each item teach kids to take care of their things. If a pen is missing, they notice immediately.
Once they reach primary school, children should be ready to run a “mini-shakai” or “mini-society”, says Yonaha Sanae, Minami Ikebukuro’s deputy head. Each day starts and ends with a class meeting. Children might discuss the day ahead or which dance to perform at a school event. Daily duties rotate. At the end of a lesson in Ms Kohashiguchi’s class two children clean the blackboard, while a third announces the next lesson. After that, another student announces the end of the lesson; all bow. Now it is time for lunch. There is clanking and clattering as the children on lunch duty don chef whites, roll out tables and lay out crockery. The others line up to be served by their peers, from vats of food delivered to each class by in-house cooks.
Squeaky-clean character factories
Over lunch at their desks, some children read. Others listen to a broadcast of classical music and announcements from one of the special school committees. Last week one such committee of 12- and 13-year-olds ran undokai, an annual festival of sports and dance. Between mouthfuls of tempura, salad and rice, the children assess how it went. “We didn’t tell people the choreography for the dance until two or three days before and that wasn’t enough,” they lament.
All are expected to help each other out: older pupils teach their juniors little things like where to store their bags. Children are also instructed to help more at home. Your correspondent’s older daughter was told to start making her own bento (lunch box) and packing her books every day. She doesn’t. But she and her younger sister do take pride in their daily jobs at school and frequently want to replicate them at home.
Manners and rules help the school run smoothly, says Ms Yonaha. Children place their outdoor shoes neatly in a locker when they arrive, and change into indoor shoes to keep the place clean. The school recently launched a campaign to remind children to say “hello” to each other; they were getting sloppy at it.
Japanese schoolbooks often include precise instructions for writing. Sit with a straight back, place a fist behind you and one in front to measure your distance from the desk and chair back; put your non-dominant hand in the centre of the opposite page to hold your book still as you write. Also, do stretching exercises before writing.
An emphasis on group harmony permeates everything. Ms Yonaha was shocked, during a visit to America, to see children just running around “having fun” in physical-education classes. “In Japan, sports is also about learning how to act in a group,” she says.
Japanese schools have dedicated classes for dotoku (moral education). In one, children discuss the consequences of not doing their daily classroom duty properly. “You make trouble for other people,” says a boy. When teachers tell pupils off, it is most commonly for “bothering others”, says Mr Satou. This sentiment is repeated everywhere: posters, books and lessons remind children not to “bother” their neighbours.
Morality lessons address realistic situations, such as: what if a borrowed book becomes a source of misunderstanding between friends? Today, in a fourth-grade class at Minami Ikebukuro, the topic is jumping to conclusions. The teacher asks the children to suggest examples. “Even though he’s a boy he might not like insects!” one child offers. Each child has to reflect on whether they are quick to judge others and what the effect might be. “I don’t jump to conclusions as the other person might get hurt,” writes one girl.
In the 1970s and 80s scholars looked to Japan for ideas about how to improve kids’ test scores. Now, foreign visitors are more interested in how Japanese schools promote character. Countries from Mongolia to Malaysia have talked to Japan’s government about this, says Sugita Hiroshi, a former education official now at Kokugakuin University. Since 2014 Singapore has made students clean their classrooms.
A notable fan is Egypt’s strongman, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. During a trip to Japan in 2016 he described the locals as “walking Korans” for embodying Islamic virtues. Egypt has now built 55 schools that combine its own national curriculum with Japanese-style classroom duties to foster discipline and collaboration. Some 30,000 teachers have been trained; the aim is to extend this Japanese-Egyptian hybrid to all public schools. Mr Sisi thinks it can help Egypt grow rich. (He may also, conceivably, see an opportunity to inculcate obedience to himself—handy in a country where mass protests have been known to topple presidents.)
Back in Japan, liberal-minded parents find some aspects of their system irksome. Even if they like the way primary schools work, they are often less enthusiastic about what happens at middle and high school. There is an emphasis on rote learning—understandable, given the need to memorise over 2,000 characters, but often excessive, at the expense of creativity. And “black rules” at some schools enforce needless conformity, from regulating the length of socks or the colour of hairbands to requiring all pupils to wear white underwear. In 2017 a girl in Osaka sued her school for ordering her to dye her naturally brown hair black.
Children learn not to stand out. (Japan has a saying: “The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.”) Although dotoku encourages the discussion of different viewpoints, everyone knows the correct answer, says Otani Nanako, a mother in Tokyo who has one child in an international school and two in Japanese ones. Children who are different may be bullied. Mixed-race kids, known as “hafu” (from the English “half”) have an especially hard time. Absenteeism is growing, not least because nonconforming children often find school oppressive. According to Unicef, the UN’s children’s agency, Japanese kids are physically in better shape than those in any other rich country, but come a dismal 37th out of 38 for mental well-being.
Lisa Katayama is a half-Japanese, half-Chinese mother of two who lives near San Francisco and has her children in Japanese schools. When she goes to Japan, she finds the sense of social harmony “feels good ….like a nice warm bath”. But “the concern with not causing an inconvenience to others can be stifling.”
Many Japanese schools—and the government—are trying to deal with the downsides. In the 1990s and early 2000s a policy of yutori kyōiku (“relaxed education”) allowed for a lighter curriculum and a shorter school week (five days instead of six) to give students more free time. But some commentators, especially nationalistic ones, blame it for what they see as slipping standards. Many parents are as desperate as ever for their kids to get into the right university, setting them up for a job at a prestigious company.
So from fifth grade many children attend juku, or cram school, to prepare for college entrance exams. This is anything but relaxed—and violates the spirit of chi-toku-tai. Ohki Souma describes a daily routine of regular school, then four hours of homework, then a long evening cramming. He says he has given up his football club to fit in all the swotting. He is ten.
Other parents seek more of a balance. Sugiura Yumi, seven-year-old Kouma’s mother, considered enrolling her children in juku but then decided to let them have more time for their hobbies instead. Kouma likes to swim and go to insect exhibitions.
Fall seven times, get up eight
The overall excellence of Japan’s schools should not be underplayed. Japanese 15- and 16-year-olds come third, fifth and second respectively in the reading, maths and science tests run by the OECD. But as Japanese society changes, its schools must, too. Not everyone aspires to be a salaryman these days, individuality is increasingly prized and immigration is gradually making the culture less homogeneous. Mr Satou says it is “very hard” to strike the right balance between fostering community spirit and giving pupils enough space to express themselves freely.
Meanwhile, a few parents are voting with their feet. Ms Otani, for example, moved her son Luka, now 13, from a Japanese public school to an international one for secondary education. “It works beautifully until a certain age,” she says. “Then it becomes about shaping people to fit into the system.”
Your correspondent may end up doing something similar. Her kids have benefited enormously from the self-reliance and wide range of skills that Japanese schools instil, but it may soon be time to move on.
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